Seeds of Inspiration for December 2nd through November 21st

The Creative Department | November 21st, 2007 | | PrintThis

These are my links for December 2nd through November 21st:

Understanding Web Design - “Web design is not book design, it is not poster design, it is not illustration, and the highest achievements of those disciplines are not what web design aims for…So what is web design?” Jeffrey Zeldman breaks it down.
The Future of Reading (A Play in Six Acts) - The reality behind Amazon’s new e-book reader.
Online Newspaper Advertising Growth Continues - Jumps 21% in 3rd Quarter - However, total advertising expenditures at newspaper companies were down 7.4 percent from the same period a year earlier. Spending for print ads in newspapers totaled $10.1 billion, down nine percent versus the same period a year earlier.
Making Social Connections and Selling Cookies - Pepperidge Farm is going social with a website devoted to social networking â�� artofthecookie.com, which is meant to help women â�� the target audience for Pepperidge Farm â�� improve their social lives by â��connecting through cookies.â�?
Womenkind Opens Doors - Four partners, including former Lowe worldwide CEO Jerry Judge, have launched Womenkind, an agency that will use a network of women to conceptualize and execute ads designed to appeal to females.
Perfect Ad Placement - Apple goes for the throat in this ad placed on c|net’s guide to Windows Vista. (You’ll need to disable Adblock in Firefox.)
The World Has Changed - WWF’s great campaign to raise awareness of the dangers of global warming reminds us that some of our past actions may have seemed right or normal at the time, but now just seem so wrong. Remember when we didn’t wear seatbelts and smoked during pregnancy?
VIDEO: HuckChuckFacts - Chuck Norris doesn’t endorse Mike Huckabee, he tells America how it’s gonna be. And how it’s gonna be, is single-digit approval ratings in the polls. Apparently not even Chuck can help the Arkansas governor. Has Jack Bauer endorsed anybody yet?
Petside - P&G & NBC Universal’s new site aims to be “the premier online source for pet owners and pet enthusiasts like you!”
A Web Site for Pet Lovers, and Marketers Who Love Them - Knowing that you can never underestimate peopleâ��s love for their cats and dogs, NBC Universal and Procter & Gamble have set up a Web portal that looks something like a Yahoo or AOL for pet owners, with a bit of Facebook and MySpace thrown in.
Comcast Must Die - “Never pick a fight,” Mark Twain is reputed to have observed, “with a man who buys his ink by the barrel.” Comcast should have thought twice about picking a fight with Advertising Age columnist and co-host of NPR’s On The Media, Bob Garfield.
The 25 Most Baffling Toys From Around the World - These are weirdest, most ill-conceived toys from around the globe. If you’re about to say that they’re “weird” only because of our own xenophobic ignorance of other cultures, well, we have two words for you: Poop toys.
The Massive List of Genius - People With the Highest IQ - â��Let me put it this way. Have you ever heard of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates? Morons.â�?
NORTH VALE by Larry Carlson - Welcome to North Vale, a surreal and spooky land just behind the veils of reality. Enjoy your trip and be sure to click around the pictures to uncover hidden worlds.
oobject - It’s like Billboard Charts for Gadgets.
Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies - The answer quite often is because of other people - something social psychologists have comprehensively shown.
The 2007 BullsIT Awards: The Top Ten Tech-Flack Quotes of the Year - “Marketing clearly can be done with ethics and morals. And yet, and yetâ�¦ And yet I will allow the representatives to speak for themselves.” The first annual BullsIT awards: the best of the worst in high tech digital security flackery, from 2007.
Manly Ways to Prepare Turkey - You can improve almost any food by wrapping it in bacon. Itâ��s the American way. Bacon-Wrapped Turkey is becoming quite popular.
Google Has Even Bigger Plans for Mobile Phones - Following the release of its new software for cellphones, Google is gearing up to make a bid at buying the 700 MHz wireless spectrum, a chunk of the airwaves that can be used to provide mobile phone and Internet services, in a FCC auction in January.
Web Videos Stealing TV Viewers, and Marketers - As broadband service becomes more available at home, the growing prevalence of video programming on the Internet is catching the attention of consumers â�� not to mention marketers and media companies.
Starbucks to Break First National TV Campaign - Showing the first signs of store saturation and fewer transactions per store, Starbucks launches its first national TV ad campaign today in an effort to get consumers to buy another cup.
Ciyt Beat: Buy This Crumby Book - Busken Bakery celebrates its billboard campaigns in new bookâ��amply illustrated with some of the bakery’s best ads, from the seasonal “Boosken” for Halloween to the sublime “Bayou One,” illustrated with a Mardi Gras King Cake.
VIDEO: Orangina ’s Furry New Ad - Apparently there’s more than just juice in there.
Spam One-liners - a photoset on Flickr - Great illustrations of Spam subject lines.
Cyclops! - Great web comic about what might happen if a cyclops came to your town.
Your Ad Here: Web Surprise Hits â��08 Race - Visitors to Gay.com can sign up to find the perfect dating partner, advice on sex and how-to articles on same-sex marriage and parenting. During at least 2 days in August, they might also have seen banner ads for the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney.
Where Are the Most Bicycle-Friendly Cities in the World? - We all know Amsterdam leads the list - since bicycles account for 40 percent of all traffic in that city. But who round out the top 11 friendliest cities for bikes in the world?
Nico Market - Are you a smoker? Our products have been specially designed to increase the effects of tobacco on you and the people around you. Still a non-smoker? Our products allow you to experience the effects of tobacco without inhaling a single puff of smoke!
Leftover Loot - Since 9/11, the TSA has collected tons of items at airport security checkpoints. What happens to all that stuff? Here’s how to buy TSA contraband.
2008 Presidential Candidates Vote by Logo - Do the truly patriotic thing and vote for the best 2008 presidential campaign logo. A great logo can boost public recognition and positive emotional response to a candidate, while a lame one will do just the opposite (I’m looking at you Newt).
Make My Logo Bigger Cream - Clinically Proven Logo Enhancing Formula - Improves brand recognition! Grabs customers’ attention! Works in just minutes! Goes on smooth!
Is It Me Or Is Esurance Just Insane? - What exactly made you call us for car insurance? Was it our robots?
VectorMagic - Awesome tool for taking bitmap images and turning them into beautiful, scalable vector art. Just upload your image and VectorMagic converts it for you.
Facebook Got Its $15 Billion Valuation â�� Now What? - When a startup shows an estimated $150 million in revenue, isn’t wildly profitable, and doesn’t have a clear revenue model, no company in its right mind would give it a $15 billion valuation - except, it seems, if we’re talking about Facebook.
Apple now bigger than Big Brother - Apple watched its quarterly financials push the companyâ��s stock price up to around $187 a share, vaulting the iPod maker’s market cap past IBMâ��s, the target of Appleâ��s infamous “1984″ ad, by about $6 billion.
NY Times: In Foray Into TV, Google Is to Track Ad Audiences - The search giant is set to announce a partnership today with the Nielsen Company that will give advertisers a more vivid and accurate snapshot of how many people are viewing commercials on a second-by-second basis, and who those people are.
Google Declares Jihad On Blog Link Farms - A major Google page rank update has punished large scale blog link farms and similar sites indulging in heavy cross linking by dramatically cutting their Google page rank scores.
Contextual Advertising Mistakes - The inability to choose your next closest neighbor has made for some unfortunate, but funny, “branding issues.”
BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF - New York Zoos and Aquarium’s wonderful site for turning yourself into a chimera.
Shop Victoriously - eBay’s website to complement their brand campaign features a new web series starring comedians Andy Richter and Paul F. Tomkins as “The Winnervators,” who travel across the country in their “Winner-bago” in search of winners of all shapes and sizes.
The Superest - The Superest is a continually running game of My Team, Your Team. The rules are simple: Player 1 draws a character with a power. Player 2 then draws a character whose power cancels the power of that previous character. Repeat.
When bloggers aren’t journalists: off the record - Blogs are great for discussing current events, particularly shades and nuance from multiple angles. But real journalism has a strong code of ethics, a responsibility to source reports, and careful editorial review. TechCrunch isn’t even trying to do that.
NY Timesâ��Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place - Though street crime is relatively low in Japan, quirky camouflage designs like this vending-machine dress are being offered to an increasingly anxious public to hide from would-be assailants.
MySpace Launches Scripted Series - MySpace users can interact with the characters through their site profiles and even influence the arc of the show.
Raising Neptune: Veronica Mars Fans - Veronica Mars fans pool money to promote the show’s Season 3 DVD as its star heads to NBC’s Heroes by flying a banner between Middletown and Cincinnati. Seems kinda wet for anybody to notice.
Pat Sajak and Vanna White Talk Typography - Hmmm, my long-dormant Vanna White crush is beginning to stir, cicada-like, from its 17-year hibernation. Something about the way she says “Helvetica?”
VIDEO: Call and Response - Defining the fine line between catchy commercial jingles and mental paralysis.
VIDEO: Gabe & Max’s Internet Thing - Gabriel Delahaye and Max Silvestri present an ad for their revolutionary program “Gabe and Max’s How To Get the Dreamlife of Your Dreams Using the Internet”.
One Way To Create Customer Evangelists - Have customer service that goes above and beyond the call. One customer’s tale of why Zappos brings her to tears â�� in a good way.
Ametrica!: An Interview With Amy Wang - The winner of the Adobe Design Achievement Award for her campaign idea to convert America to the metric system.
Apple cuts price on DRM-free music to 99 cents - Apple has cut the price of its DRM-free music from $1.29 to 99 cents, the same amount it charges for songs encoded with its FairPlay DRM technology. The move brings Apple’s pricing closer to that of Amazon, which sells DRM-free music for 99 cents or less.
Copperplate Gothic Bold - Love for The Best Font Ever! - “THE Font”, otherwise known as Copperplate Gothic Bold speaks to people in glorious and wonderful ways. One font rises above the noise and clatter of common man transcending space and time. Used by the best designers and font houses around the globe…
VIDEO: A Few Good Creative Men - Doing ads, good ads, remarkable ads, is much more than having good ideas, it is more than saving a life while performing a successful heart surgery, doing ads is an art…
VIDEO: Share Louisville Campaign - The new ad campaign for the Greater Louisville Inc. and Convention and Visitors Bureau says it as plainly as it can. Your city sucks. Move to Louisville.
2007 Breakthrough Awards - Top Innovators, Inventors, Products, Tech Gadgets of the Year - Popular Mechanics third annual innovation celebration, honoring eight bold inventors (with video from the lab) and 10 cutting-edge products with one big, IQ-packed party and three important discussions for our future.
Hillbilly How-to: Practical uses for your old computer pieces - Computers are good for many things - I use mine mostly for listening to compact discs, playing that awesome pinball game, and checking the finishing times at NASCAR.com - but did you know they can be just as useful when they’re broken?
OldVersion.com - Because newer is not necessarily better. Find older versions of software that may have not necessarily improved with updates.
2007 Nikon Small World Winners - Winners of the annual microscopy photography contest.
Insanity - Awesome installation of a pack of 99 life-sized wolves barreling in a continuous stream towardsâ��and intoâ��a constructed glass wall.
French fry-coated hot dog - If Coney Island witnessed the birth of the hot dog, Seoul in South Korea saw subsequent generations mutate into a an entirely new genus of animal. An animal coated in a skin of batter and french fries then presented deep-fried on a stick.
VIDEO: Pure Blonde Beer - Great ad for Pure Blonde Beer - From a place much more pure than yours.
John Cleese’s Friendly Advice Machine - Wherein the star of Fawlty Towers and Monty Python answers your most pressing data warehousing questions.
How to Get Started in SEO/Marketing Copywriting - In order to get more acclimated to writing for SEO and to marketing writing in general, here’s a recommended reading list as well as a list of bloggers who focus on writing copy for the SEO and marketing worlds.
What is User-Generated Content? - An experiment for generating knowledge as a collective from a grad student at University of Washington. Defining UGC can be in itself an example of UGC.
Wi-Fi Detector Shirt - Display the current wi-fi signal strength to yourself and everyone around you with this stylish Wi-Fi Detector Shirt. The glowing bars on the front of the shirt dynamically change as the surrounding wi-fi signal strength fluctuates.
Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick - As the author mentions, this is a gross simplification, but the guts of it are helpful for understanding how to communicate to people in everday life AND through advertising media.
Color Usage by NASA - NASA’s site to aid designers who are not color experts find usable color designs.
DIY wooden keyboard kit - Hacoa, a brand known for its high-quality, hand-made wooden keyboards and peripherals, will soon begin offering a do-it-yourself type keyboard kit that allows the purchaser to cut the keys from a plank of wood and assemble the pieces.
Mint | Refreshing Money Management - The free, simple personal finance solution. Track all your spending automatically, find the best deals, save more money. And save the world.
ERBERT & GERBERT’S Human Flipbook - Sandwich chain Erbert and Gerbert’s innovative ad - featuring a whole (hole?) bunch of T-shirts.
VIDEO: How Staedtler Pencils Are Made - Fascinating short video on how pencils are manufactured. Narrated by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s mother.
10 Usability Nightmares You Should Be Aware Of - Nevermind what design you have, and nevermind which functionality you have to offer â�� if your visitors donâ��t understand how they can get from point A to point B they wonâ��t use your site.
10 Worst Apple Commercials - No technology company has produced more compelling commercials than Apple. Very few companies have generated the amount of buzz Apple’s ads have over the years. Of course, that doesn’t mean they haven’t dropped the ball a few times.
Baseball Barry Bonds hit for home run No. 756 to be branded with an asterisk - Fashion designer Marc Ecko, who bought the ball in an online auction, set up a Web site for fans to vote on the ball’s fate, and the decision to brand it won out over the other options, sending it to the museum unblemished or launching it into space.
Writers Resources - Writing Links & Writers Links for Writers - Get write.
Big Brewers Gut Ad Spend, Sell More Beer - Big brewers take 1 in 4 of the dollars in their measured media budgets and pour them into non-traditional media and promotional activities. The result? More beer sold.
Company Will Monitor Phone Calls to Tailor Ads - New York Times - Companies like Google scan their e-mail usersâ�� in-boxes to deliver ads related to those messages. Will people be as willing to let a company listen in on their phone conversations to do the same?
VIDEO: Michel Gondry’s Motorola Commercial - One hit of LSD, $10. Motorola RAZR 2, $199. Feeling like your phone takes you into another world…. priceless.
VIDEO: Darth Vader Blues - Darth Vader is a lean, mean master of the mouth harp.
Where Are They Now, And Who Were They Then? â�� Advertising Icons Edition - Catching up with some of advertising’s spokespeople of yesteryear - including Crazy Eddie, “MIghty Mouth” John Moschitta, and, of course, Mikey.
Star Wars: The Musical - Not sure what else to say, but, “May the Force break your leg.”
PARK(ing) Day 2007 - Piss of some commuters near you!
Ric Flair Finance - Tired of getting the runaround and turndown from all the big lenders? Now Ric Flair Finance will do all the work for you. “Forget the rest. Just work with the best! Wooooo!”
Logo Study: Batman - A look at Batman’s logos over the years.
Double-Toothpicks - What happens when you have a heckuva good time with copywriting? You send out tiny sticker-fixes to correct your enthusiasm for distasteful language.
Ponoko - The world’s first personal manufacturing platform. It’s the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make, and trade individualized product ideas on demand.
Google drops rich media bombshell - Another day, another breakthrough from the people at Google. This time the search giant may have found a way to measure the effectiveness of rich media advertising, according to a Reuters report.
VIDEO: Brylcreem Effortless - The commercial for Brylcreem starring Sam Veale, featuring the music of Scottish indie rockers B Raymond and the Voicettes. Sam was chosen following a competition on MySpace. Reminiscent of Honda’s “Cog” ad.
Escalator Step Advertising - Put your brand where people can step on it.
Wes Anderson To Direct New AT&T Ads - The ad campaign is called â��Your Seamless Worldâ�? and hopes to â��speak to the on-the-go lifestyle of todayâ��s consumers and businesses.â�? Anderson will be overseeing six of the commercials.
Everyone should have a hobby. Our hobby is destroying illegal billboards with the rule of law. - The outdoor advertising industry has a global culture of non-compliance with the law. Advertising companies are erecting illegal billboards all over the world, wherever they can get away with it.
Download This: YouTube Phenom Has a Big Secret - WSJ.com - 24-yr old singer/songwriter MariÃ© Digby has been hailed as proof of how the Internet is transforming entertainment. But in reality she demonstrates the lengths traditional media are going to take advantage of the Internet’s ability to generate buzz.
Best Opening Lyrics Ever… - The best opening lines to pop songs…
Adobe Gets Ready to Roll Out Online Image Editor - “Photoshop Express” - a free, Flash-based online image editor.
Phil Collins + Gorilla = Awesome. - Great online video for Cadbury Dairy Milk.
CSS @ Ten: The Next Big Thing - The future of CSS… web fonts. Instead of making pictures of fonts, the actual font files can be linked to and retrieved from the web. This way, designers can use TrueType fonts without having to freeze the text as background images.
VIDEO: Content-Aware Image Sizing - Very cool video by Dr. Ariel Shamir that demonstrates a software application that resizes images in such a way that the content of the image is preserved intelligently.
Kara Visits Truveoâ��s Tim Tuttle - All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher visits with online video search site, Truveo, founder Tim Tuttle.
404 Error Pages: Reloaded - Smashing Magazine asked their readers to design their own 404 pages - here are the results.
New Samsung phones to help you pratice safe sex - The phone in question will not protect you from STDs, but it will tell you about the days when you can â��do itâ�? without the risk of getting yourself or your partner pregnant by monitoring a womanâ��s cycle by measuring basal body temperature (BBT).
iMedia Connection: “Family Guy” creator inks AdSense deal - “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane and Raven Symone, star of Disney’s “That’s So Raven” will distribute made-for-internet shorts through AdSense under the umbrella of Media Rights Capital and Google. Hopefully they won’t be working together.
VIDEO: Guinness - It’s Alive Inside - New Guinness ad is sort of Stomp meets Happiness Factory.
Why FireFox is Blocked - Apparently someone out there doesn’t like the ability to customize the Firefox browser to block ads. Can you guess who? Probably not web designers…
How to Hire an Ad Agency - 10 guiding principles to consider the next time you’re looking for an advertising agency.
VIDEO: Coca-Cola - Happiness Factory: The Movie - Happiness Factory, part II. What happens when they run out of Coke?
34 More Ways to Build Your Own Social Network - A review of companies that specialize in the creation of social networks. These companies offer either made-to-order solutions or downloadable software.
Karma Consolidation - relieve your suffering, reduce misfortune up to 60% - Stop Paying For A Past Life! Have you ever asked yourself “why me”? You are not alone. There is no need to suffer so when you can consolidate your karma.
Google Key to Latest ITunes Challenge - Add gBox Inc. to the growing list of online music services hoping to chip away at iTunes’s dominance. The Cupertino startup was forced out of a stealth mode when Universal Music Group announced late Thursday it would test sales of DRM-free music.
Coolest Mock-up Evah: Guy Creates iPhone from Scratch, Even Better than the Real Thing - It may look, feel, shine and even taste like an iPhone. But believe it or not, this is not an iPhone. As you can see in the step-by-step gallery, a guy â��frustrated by the fact that the JesusPhone is not available in Japanâ�� hand-made his own from scrat
Pearl Jam censored by AT&T, calls for a neutral ‘Net - A bit of heavy-handed censorship of a Pearl Jam concert by AT&T this weekend led the band to fire off an open letter to fansâ��a letter in which Pearl Jam railed against media and ISP consolidation and called for readers to support network neutrality.
Job Descriptions From The Future: The Valley’s most dreaded job, YouTube watcher - Silicon Valley’s newest entry-level job: YouTube watcher. Big media companies, constrained by the limits of copyright law and Google’s recalcitrance, are forced to pay companies to slog through YouTube’s bloated index searching for infringements.
VIDEO: Human Joysticks - The premiere of NewsBreaker Live - interactive crowd gaming in movie theaters. Captured opening weekend of Spider Man 3 in Los Angeles. Also played in Philadelphia and White Plains, NY. Created by SS+K and Brand Experience Lab for msnbc.com.
Tivo helper - Great ad for a Utah Toyota dealership - Tony Divino Toyota.
Pete Goldlust’s Carved Crayons - Screw “Burnt Siena.” These are cool crayons.
This is how it should feel. - Nice outdoor/indoor/transit from Westin.
UNIQLOCK - Mesmerizing world clock from the folks at UNIQLO.
VIDEO: Rhett Miller “Chili’s commercial” - Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s covers the Chili’s jingle.
THE HELLO EXPERIMENT - Awesome. For reference, search for Lionel Richie and Hello on Youtube.
Office Snapshots - See inside the offices of Web/Tech companies like Craigslist, Woot!, Facebook, Pixar and more!
World Clock - …and then some…
IT Gets Easier - Christopher Guest directed online spot for Intel - Hardware meets software and IT gets easier.
Five Ballpark Promotions That Went Wrong - Do you often choose what sports tickets to buy based on the promotion? While its always nice to get a free flashlight or bobblehead, there have been some fan promotions that didnâ��t go so well. Hereâ��s a look at five that failed.
FAVEUP - Design Inspiration Gallery - logos, business cards, flash websites, and css websites.
9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network - TechCrunch reviews 9 white label social network options - including hosted, do-it-yourself solutions, software for download and installation onto your own server, and companies who work closely with you to build a social network based on your needs.
Weekly World News Killed By Aliens, Zombie Elvis, Declining Circulation - “…the Board of Directors has chosen to close Weekly World News. The reasons given make no sense. We’re stunned and shell-shocked…” Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!
Site aimed at video doers, not watchers, expands - ReeledIn could become a resource for advertising agencies that want to tap into the appetite for user-generated content, while finding online videographers who are slightly more polished.
Eyes Wide Shut - In 1947 Life Magazine asked some famous comic strip artists to to draw their famous characters while wearing a blindfold. The results are interesting…
UTA, Spot Runner Deal Casts Stars Online - United Talent Agency has married its celebrity power-brokering skills with the internet savvy of Spot Runner to form 60Frames Entertainment Corp., a joint venture dedicated to bringing Hollywood production value to online publishers.
Taco Bell to Cast User Avatars in TV Spot - The YUM! brand ventures into user-generated advertising with an online casting call for fans to create a digital representation of themselves, through an uploaded photo, then record a 15-second rationale for starring in the commercial.
iDea - The iDea is designed with 7 diagonal inches of space. No more short-handed squiggles.
Terrorist organization logos - Terrorist groups, like any organization, need brand identities. So terrorist organizations have logos. It recently occurred to me that someone had to actually design those logos. Grouped by dominant design elements.
Southern Comfort at HUGO - Three summer cocktail recipes perfect for a Friday afternoon.
Better Off Dead Camaro - An obsessed fan tracks down and buys the 1967 Camaro driven by one Lane Meyer in the movie, “Better Off Dead.”
Kwik-E-Mart - To promote The Simpsons Movie, 7-11 retrofit 11 stores across the U.S. to resemble Apu Nahasapeemapetilan’s beloved Kwik-E-Mart, the Springfield convenience store in the classic cartoon TV series. Here are photos of the Burbank store.
Relearn to Drive - Who taught you to drive? Itâ��s the question BMW asks on newly launched, RelearnToDrive. Featuring hilarious videos with different characters who may have taught you to drive, but have no clue what theyâ��re talking about.
FTC Nixes Net Neutrality - In a report on broadband availability and connectivity, the FTC found little reason to protect consumers and content providers from attempts by large telecommunications providers to charge more for faster delivery.
PowerPoint Turns 20, Creators Ponder the Dark Side to Success - The creator reminds us that a PowerPoint presentation was never supposed to be the entire proposal, just a quick summary of something longer and better thought out, “A lot of people don’t like the intellectual rigor of actually doing the work.”
MySpace, Chasing YouTube, Upgrades Its Offerings - New York Times - On Thursday, MySpace plans to rename and refurbish the video-sharing service on its popular social network. The new service, called MySpace TV, will be set up as an independent Web site (www.myspacetv.com) that people can visit to share and watch video.
Shifd.com - Shift between your computer and mobile seamlessly. - Extremely cool feature for your phone. Hack Day London 2007 Winner.
MacGyver Tip: Unlock your vehicle with a tennis ball - The key, pun intended, is air pressure.
Social sites reveal class divide - Fans of MySpace and Facebook are divided by much more than which music they like, suggests a study… apparently MySpace is the trailer park of social networking sites.
The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills - So while it may not be exactly easy for Novell NetWare engineers and OS/2 administrators to find employers who require their services, it’s very difficult to declare these skills — or any computer skill, really — dead.
U.S. places a slow 6th in Internet speed - Los Angeles Times - The median Internet speed in the U.S. is 1.97 mbps…dwarfed by No. 1 Japan, which offers users 61 mbps at the same price as U.S. service. The difference in speed means that downloading a movie in Japan takes two minutes compared with 2+ hours in the U.S.
vayama | international travel solved - Nice AJAX-y site to find international flights.
Doritos Invites Consumers To Create an Xbox Live Game - Doritos is back at the consumer-generated game once again. This time, it’s partnering with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 to let fans design an Xbox LIVE Arcade game embodying the spirit of the tortilla chip brand.
Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers - “We did our best to bring you a comprehensive list of blogging resources, which should be equally useful to beginners as well as veteran bloggers.”
34 Uses for That Can of Soda, Other Than Quenching Thirst - “The chemical soup that makes up most commercial soft drinks not only makes them taste good and quench thirst, but also make them effective cleaning agent.”
70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding | Smashing Magazine - Some of the most interesting and useful CSS tricks, tips, ideas, methods, techniques and coding solutions
80+ AJAX-Solutions For Professional Coding | Smashing Magazine - “AJAX makes it possible to create more interactive, more responsive and more flexible web-solutions. And itâ��s the first step towards rich internet applications of the future.”
33 Ways to Watch Free TV Online - Instead of browsing through the channels with your remote, you could be browsing through the free online TV providers on your computer - hell, if you like, you can watch them all at once (in really tiny windows).
25 Web Sites to Watch - What’s tomorrow’s YouTube? The Web’s next breakout hit may be one these innovative, useful, and fun new sites.
eBay: MY DATA - Non-Personally Identifiable Info for Marketing - “Stop wasting your time trying to guess if Iâ��m in your target audience and what TV shows you can reach me on — even though I’m in the demo, I don’t watch 24. And if I did, Iâ��d tivo through the commercials.”
LongJump - New site for creating web application mashups. No coding knowledge required, just drag and drop.
Pigs With Cellphones, but No Condoms - An entertaining ad for Trojans is rejected by FOX and CBS because, “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.â�?
AUDIO: Are Computer Keyboards Dishwasher Safe? - Studies show that computer keyboards have more bacteria than toilet seats. But it’s hard to clean all those keys. So some people advocate an extreme solution: Throw your keyboard in your dishwasher. From NPR’s Morning Edition, 6/14/2007.
Reactee - T-shirts that text back - Interesting idea for a t-shirt company. Design your shirt with a username that those that see it can text you a message at Reactee.
VIDEO: Mr. T: The “T” in I.T. - Mr. T saves the I.T. world from corporate zombies, a cold-hearted consultant, and dumb disk arrays!
A Bicycle Built of Wood - Daisy, daisy… Designer Roland Kaufmann has gone and built a bicycle out of wood. He calls this gorgeous cycle Jano, and says it’s a dual bike, equally at home trekking cross-country or taking its rider to and from work every day. But wood? Really?
dyeSight $2 Multi-Touch Pad - You’ve seen the multi-touch demos by Jeff Han, Apple and Tactiva. I wanted to play around with some ideas that required a multi-touch pad, but there aren’t any devices available so I made a simple one from a plastic bag, some dye and a camera.
Apple Launches Safari Broswer for Windows - While Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer for Mac eons ago, Apple has decided that they might as well start offering Safari for Windows. After all, you can load Windows on your Mac, why not use a Mac browser, right?
Adverblog: Toyota challenges Greek bloggers - For the launch of their new hatchback model, the Auris, Toyota Hellas wanted a digital campaign that would promote the new car’s interior design and the feel drivers get sitting inside the modern “cockpit”. OgilvyOne Athens decided to think “Web 2.0″…
Wakey’z Drugmall - Nice viral site for the Sleepnumber bed.
LG Philips announces A4 color e-paper - The vivid bendable display measures just 35.9-centimeters diagonally and is 0.3-millimeter thick. When will it be for sale? Your guess is as good as ours.
Ads of the World | Advertising Archive & Community - Niiiiice collection of ads from around the world.
YourBroadcaster Social Network Movie Project - Make a movie! With people you don’t even know! Yet…
reCAPTCHA - Stop Spam, Read Books. Using SPAM preventing captcha’s to digitize physical books that were written before the computer age.
Facebook Opens Up API To Developers - The No. 2 social network site, behind News Corp.’s MySpace, will allow developers to build services that work both inside Facebook’s site and on their own independent sites.
“Cavemen” Pilot Doesn’t Look Good - Watch a clip of the new ABC series based on the Geico ads featuring metrosexual cromagnons. Wonder if they can cancel this before the first commercial break?
Street Installations - Sure to be incorporated into outdoor advertising soon!
Marketing Disasters - Unfortunate, untimely, or just plain stupid advertising campaigns and branding choices.
Battle of the Ad Bands - To benefit the Geneva Center for Autism.
Spoiler Alert - Perfect t-shirt for your nerd friends. Or you.
Free Vectors by Vecteezy! - An index of Free Vectors available for download by some of the best designers around the world.
Pet food industry unites in crisis - Three officials affiliated with the Pet Food Institute talk about how they handled the pet food recall.
Big Boxes Becoming Smaller Boxes - Big box retailers like Best Buy, Circuit City, Home Depot, and Office Max are opening smaller locations to penetrate fast-growing suburbs, rural areas and gaps between their larger stores — places that can’t support one of their superstores.
Where Does the Trade Press Think the Stock Industry Is Headed? - At its annual meeting earlier this month, PACA invited four representatives of the stock photo trade press to discuss current industry trends and share their opinions of what stock photo agents might expect in the near future.
RetailMeNot - Coupon codes for thousands of online stores.
Collection of 107 Add to Cart buttons of the Top Online Retailers - Over 100 â��Add to Cartâ�? buttons from the top online retailers of 2006 and how these buttons can help reinforce your branding.
Is Blog A Four-Letter Word? - Fittingly, this question is asked in, you guessed it, a blog.
SÃ£o Paulo No Logo - What happens when a city removes all of its outdoor advertising? Vicariously visit Sao Paolo to find out.
LOLTrek - I’m in ur sick bay, hasslin’ the Tribbles.
TV Jingle Quiz - We got 16 outta 16. How many can you get?
Disney DxD - Disney ventures into social networking.
45% of Europeans watch TV online - A new study from Motorola has found that an amazing 45% of Europeans now watch television online. The survey covering the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain found that the French lead Europe in terms of online television consumption…
A Map of Online Communities -
Become a Master of Metaphor and Multiply Your Blogging Effectiveness - Metaphors allow you to create extraordinary meaning out of the seemingly mundane.
The Battle to Control Obama’s Myspace - Campaign staffers battle with a support over the control and compensation for one of the most popular pages on MySpace - myspace.com/barackobama.
When the Pandora’s Box of Social Media Is Opened - Someone cracked the digital rights management system intended to prevent the illegal copying of content on protected DVDs and released a key, composed of an alphanumeric string. Digg removed the post and Digg users revolt.
TomTom, portable GPS car navigation systems - Add a little spice to your car’s navigation system by having the directions read to you by Mr. T. Or Dennis Hopper. Or Gary Busey.
False Advertising - Pop Culture Has Rarely Been Kind to the Heroic Adman - If anything, the ad business today is even more emblematic of the postindustrial work life most of us lead. Technology may be better, offices more hip and audiences more savvy, but ultimately, the advertising business can be just as soul-draining.
You Call This Transparency? - Companies That Promise Full Disclosure but Deliver a Doctored View Reveal Themselves in PR Gaffes.
American Dad Vs Family Guy Kung Fu -
Very Funny Ads - From the folks at TBS, watch the World’s funniest commercials.
BannerBlog : Where Banners Click - Great index of banner ads.
The Freesound Project - A wonderful collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focuses only on sound, not songs.
Webby Nominees & Winners - Some are beautiful to look at and interact with. Others are a testament to usability and functionality. And a handful excel across the board. To be selected among the best is an incredible achievement worthy of praise — and perhaps a little bragging.
fortuitous - I’ve heard of going off the grid, but this is taking going on the grid to an extreme. If your business is based on the web, you can move from your computer to any other computer on earth and pick up right where you left off.
Man Luge - Dial For Men lubes you up and sends you down the pipe of cleanliness.
Yahoo to Buy Ad Company in Bid to Compete With Google - Yahoo to acquire Right Media, a privately held company that runs an advertising marketplace, in part to bolster its position as a seller and broker of ads outside its own sprawling network of Web sites, the companiesâ�� chief executives said yesterday.
Top 50 Bulls**t Jobs - Clocking in at #1, Advertising Executive. The upside? Great expense account living, see your handiwork everywhere, the wonderful feeling of being creative and corporate at the same time. The downside? Must take meetings with the AFLAC duck.
Mobile Blogs Now a Reality with AdMob - AdMob introduces a free mobile plug-in for blogging tool WordPress which enables users to create mobile-friendlyontent easily. The plug-in is also designed to allow WordPress users to monetize their content.
VIDEO: Paul Hipp: Global Warming: Sheryl is Right -
Typetester - Great tool for webdesigners to compare fonts.
VIDEO: How to Remove A Car Dent - With Compressed Air and a Hair Dryer.
FYI, 13yo skool grl is nu US txt mssg chmpN - In a tense final, reigning champ Eli Tirosh seemed to have won after putting down her phone first, only for judges to rule she had made a 15,000-dollar typo in the lyrics to Mary Poppins song “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
The Ad Feed - Nice popurls-like ad site.
the station | alittlebettergasstation.com - BP takes a cue from Coca-Cola and uses animation to invigorate its brand. Click a little better video to watch the ads.
nomorelandingpages.com - “You’ll appreciate the big message here: you can get much more out of your email, advertising and SEM/SEO than you do today. Open your eyes. Landing pages are sub-par. They devalue your brand and under-deliver conversions.”
Tragedy Communications: Virginia Tech’s Use of New Media Tools Exemplary - VA Tech uses Web 2.0 to get their message out following the shooting tragedy.
Blogger & Podcaster Magazine - Where can you learn more about blogging and podcasting? In a magazine, of course. Read the inaugural issue <a href=”http://tinyurl.com/326t5v” target=”_blank”>here</a>. Or, if you don’t wanna read the magazine, why not check out their blog or podcast?
Man gets 5,000 calls for YouTube posting - Fitzgerald said he wanted to “be there,” for anyone who needed to talk. “I never met you, but I do care,” a spiky-haired Fitzgerald said into the camera on his YouTube posting. Great marketing opportunity for T-Mobile… let’s see what they do with it.
Digg Releases API - Should be interesting to see what sort of Digg Mashups people come up with.
10 Classic Juice Commercials - Yes, people rank these things, and no, you shouldn’t watch #1. Trust me, do not watch #1.
Eight Ideas for Revitalizing Your Blog | Marketing Profs - Some great ideas for revitalizing you blog so that both you and your customers can benefit from it.
Proud Sponsors of the Virginia Tech Shooting? - Looks like the New York Times and Inside Edition, among others, have purchased the key words.
Who is Sick? - Interesting mash-up with Google Maps. Who is sick in your area?
Heinz Top This TV Challenge - Ketchup giant jumps into the pool of user-generated advertising by enticing fledgling video makers with a $57,000 prize. At the end of the summer, 15 finalists will get to have all of America vote on their favorites. The top 5 spots will make it to TV.
Sexy Pictures and Gender Differences - Researchers hypothesized women would look at faces and men at genitals, but, surprisingly, they found the reverse is true. <a href=”http://tinyurl.com/37uult” target=”blank”>George Brett is reportedly be pissed.</a>
Catholic Mobile - If your company isn’t taking advantage of advertising to mobile phones, you might want to start. Apparently everyone else is already in the game.
New Mexico, Earth - The Best Place in the Universe - Interesting campaign by the New Mexico board of tourism. Apparently there’s more to the Land of Enchantment than just Roswell.
adfreak: Mamet for Ford? Itâ��s not such a stretch. - What’s your name? F**k you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? ‘Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW, er, Ford, um, does Ford have any $80,000 cars? Crown Victoria? Maybe, with some dope rims… THAT’S my name.
Roll out the barrel - Moerlein Brewery hopes festival helps Over-the-Rhine reclaim its past as a center of beer-making. Over-the-Rhine is about to get its own beer, a historically fitting sign that the neighborhood’s revitalization is gathering momentum.
Make Internet TV - Step-by-step instructions for creating online video that can be easily subscribed to and have the potential to be watched by millions.
Women Say No to Internet Video - While there are about 97 million U.S. women online, compared to about 91 million men, only 66 percent of females reported watching videos online, compared to 78 percent for their male counterparts.
Compubeaver - What happens when you combine building your own PC with taxidermy? Possibly one of the most disturbing PC case mods ever…
MSVU Says ‘Don’t Come Here,’ Students Respond in Droves - Apparently reverse psychology works.. at least it did with Mt. St. Vincent University’s recent ad campaign. Applications leaped 7.8 percent and visits to the site saw an 18.5 percent jump compared to the same time in 2005.
BoxOfApples - Incredible Fruit Crate Label Art from the 1940s and 1950s.
Tim O’Reilly: Web 2.0 Is About Controlling Data - The man who coined the term: “A lot of people still think, ‘Oh, it’s about social networking. It’s about blogging. It’s about wikis.’ I think it’s about the data that’s created by those mechanisms, and the businesses that that data will make possible.”